Zeppelin
That revived the company's fortunes and, during the 1930s, the airships Graf Zeppelin, and the even larger LZ 129 Hindenburg operated regular transatlantic flights from Germany to North America and Brazil.
The spire of the Empire State Building was originally designed to serve as a mooring mast for Zeppelins and other airships, although it was found that high winds made that impossible and the plan was abandoned.
This space was never heated, because fire outside of the kitchen was considered too risky, and during trips across the North Atlantic or Siberia passengers were forced to bundle in blankets and furs to keep warm and were often miserably cold.
[3] Zeppelin's patent described a Lenkbares Luftfahrzeug mit mehreren hintereinander angeordneten Tragkörpern ("Steerable aircraft with several carrier bodies arranged one behind another"),[3] an airship consisting of flexibly articulated rigid sections.
Responsibility for the detail design was given to Kober, whose place was later taken by Ludwig Dürr, and construction of the first airship began in 1899 in a floating assembly-hall or hangar in the Bay of Manzell near Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance (the Bodensee).
[18] Damaged during landing, it was repaired and modified and proved its potential in two subsequent flights made on 17 and 24 October 1900,[18] bettering the 6 m/s ( 21.6 km/h (13.4 mph) ) velocity attained by the French airship La France.
In April 1913 its newly built sister-ship LZ 15 (Z IV) accidentally intruded into French airspace owing to a navigational error caused by high winds and poor visibility.
[30] The company's fortunes changed with the next ship, LZ 10 Schwaben, which first flew on 26 June 1911[31] and carried 1,553 passengers in 218 flights before catching fire after a gust tore it from its mooring near Düsseldorf.
A preliminary attempt to bomb Reval on 28 December ended in failure caused by operating problems due to the extreme cold, and one of the airships was destroyed in a forced landing at Seerappen.
A planned attack on Suez was turned back by high winds, and on 7 April 1918 it was on a mission to bomb the British naval base at Malta when it caught fire over the Straits of Otranto, with the loss of all its crew.
In April, the first Curtiss H.12 Large America long-range flying boats were delivered to RNAS Felixstowe, and in July 1917, the aircraft carrier HMS Furious entered service and launching platforms for aeroplanes were fitted to the forward turrets of some light cruisers.
The Germans had believed that the previous unsuccessful attacks had been made by an aircraft operating from one of the Royal Navy's seaplane carriers; now realising that there was a new threat, Strasser ordered airships patrolling in the Terschilling area to maintain an altitude of at least 4,000 m (13,000 ft), considerably reducing their effectiveness.
LZ 25 was destroyed in its hangar at Düsseldorf on 8 October 1914 by bombs dropped by Flt Lt Reginald Marix, RNAS,[53] and the sheds at Cologne as well as the Zeppelin works in Friedrichshafen were also attacked.
[54] The raids were intended to target only military sites on the east coast and around the Thames estuary, but bombing accuracy was poor owing to the height at which the airships flew and navigation was problematic.
Two Zeppelins, L 3 and L 4, intended to attack targets near the River Humber but, diverted by strong winds, eventually dropped their bombs on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, King's Lynn and the surrounding villages, killing four and injuring 16.
[59] On the same night an Army raid of three Zeppelins also failed because of the weather, and as the airships returned to Evere (Brussels) they ran into a counter-raid by RNAS aircraft flying from Furnes, Belgium.
[60] After an ineffective attack by L 10 on Tyneside on 15–16 June the short summer nights discouraged further raids for some months, and the remaining Army Zeppelins were reassigned to the Eastern and Balkan fronts.
The writer D. H. Lawrence described one raid in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell:[68] Then we saw the Zeppelin above us, just ahead, amid a gleaming of clouds: high up, like a bright golden finger, quite small (...) Then there was flashes near the ground—and the shaking noise.
Ten airships set off on 31 March: most turned back and L 15, damaged by antiaircraft fire and an aircraft attacking using Ranken darts, came down in the sea near Margate.
Aeroplanes struggled to reach a typical altitude of 10,000 feet (3,000 m), and firing the solid bullets usually used by aircraft Lewis guns was ineffectual: they made small holes causing inconsequential gas leaks.
After receiving heavy gunfire and encountering a multitude of anti-aircraft search lights over London, Peterson decided to head up the Essex coast from Tilbury and abort the mission.
The airship narrowly missed Billericay High Street as it passed over, one witness saying the windows to her home rattled and the Zeppelin sounded like a hissing freight train.
They were frustrated by heavy clouds but the effort led the Kaiser to announce that airship raids on London were to stop; under pressure he later relented to allow the Zeppelins to attack under "favorable circumstances".
Crossing the North Sea during daylight, the airship was intercepted by a Royal Air Force DH.4 biplane piloted by Major Egbert Cadbury, and shot down in flames.
[112] American crowds enthusiastically celebrated the arrival, and President Calvin Coolidge invited Eckener and his crew to the White House, calling the new Zeppelin an "angel of peace".
In 1926 restrictions on airship construction were relaxed, but acquiring the necessary funds for the next project proved a problem in the difficult economic situation of post–World War I Germany, and it took Eckener two years of lobbying and publicity to secure the realization of LZ 127.
However the loss of the British passenger airship R101 on 5 October 1930 led the Zeppelin company to reconsider the safety of hydrogen-filled vessels, and the design was abandoned in favour of a new project, LZ 129.
On 6 May 1937, while landing in Lakehurst after a transatlantic flight, the tail of the ship caught fire, and within seconds, the Hindenburg burst into flames, killing 35 of the 97 people on board and one member of the ground crew.
In August 1939, it made a flight near the coastline of Great Britain in an attempt to determine whether the 100 metre towers erected from Portsmouth to Scapa Flow were used for aircraft radio location.
[128] They are also seen in the alternate reality 1939 plot line in the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and have an iconic association with the steampunk subcultural movement in broader terms.
